A Healthy Dose of Fear
Theme of the Week: Worship: On Whose Terms?
Monday, May 5, 2008
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Key Bible Verse: "What does the Lord your God require of you? … to fear him, to live according to his will, to love and worship him with all your heart and soul" Deuteronomy 10:12.Bonus Reading: Joshua 5:13-15
A friend of mine, a junior high teacher, told me how important it is to start the year being very strict. She has to instill fear in her students or they won't learn a thing. After a few weeks of setting her standards, she can lighten up and really enjoy her students. But first they need to learn the behavior she expects and fear the consequences of crossing her.
It may be like that with God. The Bible calls the fear of the Lord "the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). We must start with the knowledge that he is almighty, someone we must deal with. And we need to know what he wants from us.
But we must not stay at the point of fear. In a society browbeaten by legal restraints, Jesus summed up the Law as "love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind" (Matthew 22: 37). And the Apostle John added "perfect love expels all fear" (1 John 4:18). Within a life of mature Christian love, John is saying, we can have confidence in the face of God's judgment. Our knees need no longer knock. Our fear has grown up into love.
—David New in How to Fear God Without Being Afraid of Him
My Response: Do I approach God with a cringing fear or reverence and confidence?
Adapted from How to Fear God Without Being Afraid of Him (Victor, 1995) by permission.
Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity. 1 of 1
Keep me, God, from a presumptuous stance in Your majestic presence, but grant me a humble confidence based on Your sacrificial love.
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